


Worth In the Time of War

by ThatOddNerd



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 17:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2437769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOddNerd/pseuds/ThatOddNerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma has been safely extracted from her undercover work and is back with the team, which makes her very happy. But there are  times, when she looks at Fitz and sees how hard he works at avoiding her, that she thinks maybe her getting out unscathed isn't a good thing.</p><p>Spoilers for 2.03 and some of my own speculation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth In the Time of War

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A couple of things, one, I love Simmons, and Fitz, and everyone. It will sound harsh at first but stick with this, I'm going somewhere good with it I promise. Two, I am one of those 'oddballs' who still loves Ward and wants to see him redeemed. So I go harsh but also a bit good in the part with him. If you are going to read this just for the sake of giving me a lecture in a comment about how I am silly for still believing in Ward...nah. I have my reasons and I'm asking you to respect that. 
> 
> This ended up pretty good. Longer than I had intended but still good. I'm please with it.
> 
> And that is all I have to say except : Enjoy!

* * *

 

It's almost a year before Jemma Simmons is extracted (safely) from her undercover mission at Hydra, and after her final debriefing, Coulson notes how much she's changed since going undercover. Even May said she noticed something, and gave her one of her rate smiles of approval. And while Jemma was happy that they were happy with her, (She'd never quite lost her aim to please.), and blushed with happiness when everyone, Skye, Tripp, even the new guys Hunter and MacKenzie, poured on the praise for how well she did and how impressed they were, Jemma still felt a bit...empty. Ever since her return, Fitz hadn't said more than a handful of words to her. Nothing more than a "Welcome back Simmons. Glad you're alright." or "Could you pass me the torch? No, not that kind of torch, the blow torch." . They hadn't really...talked. Not that she could blame him. She knew he was upset about her leaving, and Skye had told her about how for awhile he was talking to a version of her he'd conjured up in his head until the day of the incident with Donnie Gill, something that still pulled at her heart, when he just...stopped. While she was glad to hear he was definitely getting better in her absence, (Not that she didn't believe Coulson when he gave her updates but, being the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. is obviously distracting and she wouldn't have blamed him if he'd missed something.) a part of her hurt when she was told he'd stopped. Fitz had never, by any means, been an entirely defenceless person, despite what many people thought. That was always the first mistake people made with him, underestimating him. She'd seen it enough times to know that when anyone tells Fitz he cannot do something, he takes that as a challenge and then laughs when he conquers it.

 

He isn't really laughing anymore, and that breaks her heart. She knows he still isn't defenceless, she'd heard many stories about his accomplishments while she was gone, but she'd also heard about his struggles near the beginning, his issues with words, his motor function issues, all of it.  He'd struggled. And Jemma just couldn't stop thinking this was all her fault.

 

Logically, she knew that train of thought was ridiculous. She didn't put them in the Med Bay that day, she didn't push the button. Ward did. Not her. But still...she'd been so insistent, and she didn't want to go into the field alone and Fitz was...well, Fitz. Of course he went with her.

 

And now here he was, recovering from serious brain damage all because of that fateful day when she begged him for hours to go with her to do field work.

 

He'd never wanted to be a field agent, he just wanted to  stay in the lab and there was nothing wrong with that. And she took him away from it, from something so much safer than what he had gone through. She remembers hearing his stories about the mission he'd went on with Ward, or the time he and Skye broke into the mansion and every time the only thing running through her mind was "He could have died, he could have died, he could have died." But he hadn't, and had come home relatively unscathed each time.

 

Until the med bay eject.

 

She wasn't sure if he'd ever really come back from the bottom of that ocean. Sure he was physically there and he was solid, but he wasn't really there.

 

At least that's how she felt. But then he'd been avoiding her and she couldn't help but wonder if he had come back, he just hadn't come back to her, and that hurt her more than she liked to admit. He came back, but apparently he'd never come back to her again. He'd saved her life so many times, and she'd saved his, but it felt like the score card would never be even. Not that it was a competition, and if it was, it was a morbid one to say the least.

 

What she hadn't told Skye or Tripp or Mack or Hunter, was that she had been shot during the extraction, in the shoulder. She'd never been shot before and the pain was unreal, but she obviously lived and spent time at a medical facility before going 'home'. May and Coulson generously lied to the team for her and told them she was getting multiple psych evals and debriefings and they were making sure she hadn't been bugged or brain washed. She knew how Skye and Tripp would have reacted if they'd known. Skye would have been so furious she would have left right that moment, hacked these peoples' bank accounts, left them with nothing, before going to where they lived and shooting them in the legs. Tripp would have helped. She thought she knew what Fitz would have done, but now, as much as she hated to admit it, she wasn't sure anymore. She didn't doubt he'd be upset, but whether or not he'd do something drastic? She didn't know anymore. She knew he cared, but to what extent she was unsure. She had fallen from his good graces, and she felt like she had deserved it. She equated much of his cold shoulder towards her for leaving, something she didn't blame him for, and for being the reason he had been in the med bay that bloody day to begin with. He was doing so well, but whether or not he'd ever fully be back to his old self, she highly doubted. And he hated her for it, she was sure of it, and she cried herself to sleep some nights because of this. When she told Skye this theory one day after she'd broken down crying at the gun range, (Coulson had deemed it advisable for her to keep up her training just in case they needed another person on a mission.) Skye rolled her eyes to try and make her smile, but then switched modes when she realized Jemma was serious about how she was feeling, and asked what was wrong. The exact words out of Skye's mouth after Jemma had explained were "Jesus Christ Simmons I thought you were a genius. That has to be the dumbest thing you've ever said." Which, of course, didn't really help. Skye assured her Fitz didn't hate her, he was just hurt. He could never hate her, and that, after learning she was on an undercover mission, at a Hydra base no less, he would consistently, not so subtly ask Coulson for updates on her to the point where Coulson, after each debrief, would come straight to Fitz after getting back and tell him, before even going to his office.

 

He still cared, enough to defy orders and apparently barge into the Director's office multiple times, to get information on her. It should have made her feel better but it didn't, because part of her thought Skye was exaggerating. He hadn't done it that much. There was no way he had. She wasn't worth it.

 

And there it was, the reason she'd felt so off since she got back, the reason she hadn't confronted him for avoiding her, the reason she wasn't on cloud nine from her first full fledged undercover operation going as well as it had. She didn't feel like she had the right to confront him, she didn't feel like she was worth the praise, she felt low, awful, and it was eating away at her inside. She felt like she had betrayed Fitz on multiple counts, failed him, and that was why she felt so bad.

 

It was also, she figured, how she'd ended up where she was at that moment, standing in front of Ward's cell in Vault D, unsure as to what it was she wanted to say to him and why she was there.

 

She sat on the chair in darkness, and took a deep breath before opening the door on her tablet. When Ward appeared she felt a jolt, a feeling of pure sadness and anger, course through her. It was then she realized that all her anger and sadness, it wasn't for her , it was for Fitz. It was always for Fitz. The anger she felt, the sadness of betrayal, on some level she guessed she felt it for herself, but at that moment, all she could think about was the image of him in that chamber, barely alive, all because...

 

"Whose there?" Ward asked, unable to see the chair's occupant from where Jemma had positioned it , so close to the opposite wall. "I can faintly see...something. Smaller stature. Not Skye, she just walks up to the glass. Coulson says 'You know what I want to say to you right now?' and proceeds to tell me off in five languages. May points a gun at me for ten solid minutes before she leaves. That new guy, Tripplett, never comes down here." Jemma noted with some admitted pleasure that he looked a bit scared when he made his next guess. " Fitz?" When Jemma didn't reply, he made another guess, his face relaxing when he realized it was not Fitz after all. "Ah, Simmons. You haven't been to visit in a long time. Where have you been?" Even though he couldn't see her she rolled her eyes, got up, and walked towards the glass.

 

"Hilarious. Don't lie to me and tell me you don't know where I've been Ward. You know. Skye said she'd talked to you near the end of it all to help get information for my extraction."

 

"I thought I'd give you the opportunity to gloat." He replied simply.

 

" I do not like to gloat!" Jemma replied, blushing.

 

"Oh you so do. You so do." Ward quipped, smiling. Despite herself, Jemma smiled back.

 

"I have a few questions for you." Jemma began. "One is...I mean I know you've probably answered this before, and I probably asked before I left but what with this lovely little grace period between our chats, I want to know if you've changed your mind, but...did you ever actually care for us? I mean I know you love Skye, I know you cared about her in your own, off way, but... did any of the rest of us mean anything to you or were we just collateral damage?" She was surprised by the look of hurt that passed through his expression.

 

" I cared. I cared about all of you. I... it made lying so much harder. It's always harder to infiltrate when you start to genuinely care about the people you're supposed to be working against. Any time any of you had been in danger the fear I'd felt was real. I know none of you will probably ever believe me and I don't blame you but I did, and do , care. Simmons, when you jumped off the Bus, my heart stopped for a second. All I could think was that I couldn't let someone with a good a soul as you die. I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let someone I cared about plummet to her death, even if it meant possibly dying with you. You guys had become my family and not a day goes by that I don't regret just telling Garrett to shove his agenda up his ass, I wasn't playing along anymore but..." the hollow laugh he let out then made her jump " There I was, Grant Ward, still the little soldier taking orders."

 

"If that's true..." Jemma continued after a pause "Then why...why did you... why ...."

 

"The med bay?" Jemma nodded. " The med bay, it's supposed to float.  I thought... I thought after I ejected it it would go into the water then come back up and float. I don't understand why it sank. I was trying to get you guys off the Bus and give you a chance to be rescued."

 

"Fitz... he said ...when we were down there he told me he was trying to figure out why the med bay sank." Jemma was silent for a minute, before looking at Ward straight in the eyes, the look she was giving him startling him a bit. "That doesn't excuse it though, what you did. To the team, to Skye, to S.H.I.E.L.D., to me, to...to Fitz." She was on the verge of tears now but she'd told herself before she'd come down that she wouldn't cry. Not in front of him. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd helped in temporarily breaking her.

 

" I know." She looked up at him, and like before, was surprised by his expression. Deep regret and sadness, hatred for ones' self. A feeling she'd become all too familiar with. There was a long silence between them, and Jemma felt herself grow tired. She turned around and grabbed the chair, bringing it closer to the glass before sitting down. "I wish I could take it all back."

 

"Yes, I wish you could too. Seeing as my best friend is now possibly irreversibly brain damaged." Even Jemma was surprised by the coldness in her reply, and from the look on Ward's face, he was too. " I know what you're thinking right now Ward, I know what you want to say and ask so you might as well just say it and get it over with." The amount of anger she was feeling all of a sudden was new and not familiar in the slightest. This was a type of anger that came from somewhere inside her she'd never delved into before.

 

"Simmons...I ... I'm sorry."

 

"Sorry isn't going to reverse his brain damage." Jemma spat. Ward cringed.

 

"I know. I don't... I don't know how to fix any of this."

 

"That's because you can't fix it Ward." Jemma replied cooly. "Even if we one day let you out of here and decided to trust you again enough to be part of the team, what you have done can never be undone. The relationships you built with us will never be the same. None of us will ever trust you the same way again. Fitz will never see you as a big brother anymore. Although..."  she paused, and even she was surprised by the cold words that came out of her mouth next. "I've heard how you are with little brothers before, so maybe that's a good thing."

 

"Look, I...when that happened..."

 

"I don't want to hear it." Jemma cut off, suddenly rising. " I want to believe you Ward. I want to believe that you care about us, that you didn't intend to really hurt us. I want to believe you can be saved, redeemed. But the lesson I've learned in my time at S.H.I.E.L.D. is that you can never really trust anyone, can you? So what's the point in hoping?" She turned around to leave, and was ten feet away when he called out to her.

 

"What, just like Fitz doesn't trust you anymore?" It was a cheap shot, a low blow, and as soon as he'd said it, he'd regretted it, but , like she said earlier, what's done is done. What he wasn't expecting was her reply.

 

"Yes." she said, without turning around. "Just like that."

 

"Simmons, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

 

"No, but you're right. I know you're right. You know you're right. Everyone knows. I left my best friend when he needed me the most."

 

"You were following orders." Ward attempted.

 

"Yeah, but I still went. I mean I didn't have to go. I could have said no. Coulson wouldn't have jailed me for it but...I still left. I said yes, and I left." She could feel the tears stinging her eyes, but tried hard not to shake. "I left. I was a coward. I was faced with...with Fitz, all messed up and hurt and he could barely even say my name let alone rattle off formulas. What happened to him was... it was just as much my fault as it was yours."

 

"How the hell do you figure that?" Ward could not believe what he was hearing coming out of this young woman's mouth. How could she believe that?

 

"If I hadn't convinced him to go into the field with me...if I hadn't begged him to go, if I'd just...done something different...anything, he wouldn't have been on the Bus and wouldn't have been ejected out with me and he wouldn't...he wouldn't hate me like he does. And he wouldn't have gotten hurt. And..."

 

"If Fitz hadn't been in the pod with you you would be dead." Ward reminded her. "You would have figured out how to get out no doubt, but from what I've heard it was complicated and if you had built the charge, you still would have died setting it off."

 

"I know." She snapped, still not turning around.

 

"So ...what? That would have been a better alternative? Fitz not in the pod and you dead? How does that make anything better?"

 

"Because then he would have been alive and well, and rid of me!" Jemma shouted, turning around and rushing up to the glass, slamming her right hand, the one not holding the tablet, into the glass. Tears streaming down her face, filled with rage, she glared at him. "Then he would be alive and wouldn't have had to deal with that girl who tried to convince him to go into the field with him. He'd be okay!"

 

"You're telling me you're life is worth less than his?"

 

"Yes!" she screamed. "Yes, Ward that is what I am saying!"

 

"Fitz loves you. I can tell. We can all tell. How do you think he would have felt if you'd died?" He countered.

 

"At least he would have been him! At least he wouldn't have spent a month in a coma, and another year to regain most of his old motor functions and speech patterns! At least he wouldn't have spent hours talking to himself thinking someone was there and scaring everyone! At least he would have been rid of me! He would have moved on. I... I..." Jemma took a deep breath before turning and stalking away, angrily closing the 'door' to Ward's cell and stomping up the stairs, tossing the tablet on the table as she left. She ran through the corridors of the Playground in tears, and when she came to her room, she became angry when she realized she couldn't slam the door. Damn automatic sliding doors. Once she was inside and the door was closed, she let out a scream. A scream so loud and anguished she scared even herself. How? How had it ended up like this? How did she become a somewhat hardened, drained field agent, and Fitz a broken soul? He had such a good heart, such a good soul. He wanted to believe in the good in everyone, and all it ever got him was heart break and hurt. And she'd been a part of that. Being shot, she decided, hurt less than this did. After a few minutes she heard a knock on her door.

 

"Jemma?" Skye. Of course it was Skye. Skye always seemed to know when people she cared about were upset, and Jemma could never understand how.

 

"Skye, I'm very sorry but I need to be by myself right now." Jemma called through the door, her voice cracked.

 

"What happened? I know you were visiting Ward. What did he say to you? Do I need to kick his ass? Should I turn the temp in his cell way down and make him get sick? What?" Jemma smiled a bit at this and she heard a cry of triumph from the other side of the door. "HA! I can practically hear your smile in there Jemma. Tell me what happened."

 

"Nothing Skye, nothing happened. He just...said what I've been thinking this whole time and it set me off."

 

"What...?"

 

"Go away Skye! I need to be by myself!" Jemma shouted. She heard the sound of Skye walking away and felt guilty for shouting but needed her space. She'd started to drift off when she heard the sound of the door opening, and felt herself fall backward, only to land against something solid and warm. She looked up to see ...Fitz, shit. She scrambled to her feet and backed away, trying to regain herself and appear normal, although she knew he wouldn't believe her. "Fitz! Hello! What brings you to my room? Would you like a cup of tea? A scone? Anything to make this moment feel less awkward?" She noted, with excitement, the small hint of a smile on his face at that and congratulated herself.

"Skye told me you were ...you were upset and that I should come talk to you." He replied. Jemma blushed and suddenly couldn't look him in the eye, biting her lip and turning to her suddenly fascinating book case. Their rooms in the Playground were surprisingly big and she'd enjoyed it at first but now it felt as if the room was tinier than the one she had on the Bus.

 

"I'm fine."

 

"You've been crying."

 

"Yes I have." No point in lying to him.

 

"Well, unless you somehow got epically good news here, crying isn't usually a good mood sort of thing." He replied. He walked into her room and sat down on the couch in her living quarters. She closed the door and walked over to join him, sighing as she plopped down on the couch. "So what is it? Skye told me Ward had said something to you that set you off."

 

"He just...voiced a truth about me that hit the right nerve. He tried to take it back, but what's the point in taking back something that is a fact?"

 

"What did he say?" Jemma opened and shut her mouth several times, unsure if she should tell him. Seeing the look he was giving her, she sighed.

 

"He pointed out that my distrust in him, like the entire team's distrust of him, as it is you can't really trust anyone these days, was like how you no longer trusted me like you used to because I left. " She felt the tears start up again and wiped them away. "I'm no better than he is. I'm just as responsible, I..."

 

"Jemma Simmons what the hell do you think you're saying?" Fitz sounded angry, and indeed, when Jemma turned to look at him, he was pissed. "What do you mean, you were just as responsible for what happened to me? You didn't put us in the damn med bay and eject us out of the Bus into the ocean. If memory serves, Ward did that."

 

"If I hadn't begged you to go into field work you wouldn't have been in the med bay and you wouldn't have ended up in a coma for a month with brain damage!" Jemma countered. "If I hadn't been so bloody insistent you could have been safe!"

 

"Jemma if I'd stayed where I was and worked at Head...Headquarters, I probably would have been there when Hydra rose and shot in the head! How is that better? And, and..." He sprung up from the couch, walking in circles, his hands going through his hair in frustration. " Jemma if I hadn't been there, even if I had survived the rise at Headquarters, you would be dead!"

 

"At least you would be alive!" She shouted back, now on her feet and standing toe to toe with him. "At least you would be alive and not having to go through every type of therapy under the sun and have difficulty pouring a cup of bloody coffee! Oh yes, Skye told me about that. You'd be alive and not having to deal with this shit! You..."

 

"Would be grieving over your death, and wondering , for the rest of my life, if I could have saved you had I been there! I would be feeling exactly the same way you seem to feel now except it would be worse because you would be dead and there is no way to heal death Jemma! I am recovering, but you, you'd be gone if I hadn't been there. I'm not looking for another thanks, but I am want to point out what utter shit your logic is right now because that is what it is Jemma, shit."

 

"Oh that's lovely Fitz, thank you soooo much, That makes it better." She didn't know why she was trying to push him away, but here she was, getting mad at him for caring.

 

"Well I'm right regardless. Jesus Jemma, how the hell would me spending the rest of my life, the rest of my life Jemma, wondering if I could have saved your life, be better? Because it would be the rest of my life, I wouldn't recover from that. I would hate myself, withdraw even more, become secluded. I would never forgive myself for not being there with you. Shit, Jemma, they might not have found you period, at the bottom of the ocean. You'd just disappear and we'd never know where you were. It would have destroyed me!"

 

"You were destroyed!" Jemma's tears were falling freely now, no point in hiding them, not from Fitz. "You were destroyed and it was my fault! I sat with you Fitz, I sat beside you every day you were in a coma, and all I could think was how I wish our roles had been reversed. How I wished we could just switch places. And when you came out of the coma and you couldn't...you couldn't even  say my name I... all I could think about was you were broken and I was the reason you were in the position to be broken in the first place. Ward may have put us in there and he may have pushed the button, but I , I am the reason you were there to begin with! I might as well have pushed that stupid button myself! And that...that's why I left. I mean Coulson came to me with this undercover mission, and it was an order sure, but he...if I'd refused it's not like he would have shot me or jailed me. I still said yes. I said yes and I left you because I thought..." Jemma shut her mouth tight, pressing her lips together tightly, the tears steadily falling down her face.

 

"Thought what? That I would get better faster without you?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Why? What made you believe that was a good idea? Why did you think I wouldn't want you there? I always..."

 

" Because you hate me for being the reason you have to recover from something in the first place! I know you do! It's fine, Fitz, I get it. I do. I obviously do. I...you would see me there every day and you'd be reminded of how I was the reason you were in your situation to begin with and you'd grow to hate me and resent me and ... I can't...I can't deal with that Fitz. I can't. You're my best friend. I don't have many friends, you know this. I was never popular in school and my family, they love me, but how often do I really get to see them, ever? I could live alone but I'd be lonely. I'd be so lonely, and that would drive me mad. And you were the first person to ever actually see me outside my family. And the thought that I could lose that if...the thought that I could lose that all because you would grow to hate me was too much. I couldn't be there and watch you grow to resent me Fitz, I couldn't."

 

" Good God, what is wrong with you?!" Fitz shouted, and Jemma winced, curling into herself and moving away from him slowly. Here it was. Here was when he admitted he did in fact hate her and she'd lose her best friend and...the person she loved most in the world. " Jemma, if I could go back in time and do this entire thing over , I would still have gone with you into the field, I still would have gladly done what I did in that med bay to save your life and mine. Every time. And, as you seem to have forgotten this, you saved my life too! Many times. So many times. Metaphorically and literally. I didn't know if I could deal with all of it at the academy and then here you come along and change everything. I could never go back Jemma. I could never go back to my life before I met you. It's too late for that. I would always choose to go with you, I will always... you ... you will always be my choice Jemma, no matter what. I will always choose you."

 

"You shouldn't have." Jemma replied. "I... you deserved a better life than this. You've come close to dying so many times since we started in the field and I..."

 

"What about you then huh? What about the time you jumped from the bloody BUS after you were infected?! How do you think I felt, seeing you disappear from that plane? Thinking you were going to die, trying to get the parachute and go after you...."

 

"Even then you were willing to risk your life for me." Jemma commented. "There was no assurance either of us would have survived that. Even Ward said he wasn't sure he would have. If I'd...oh god, Fitz I could have killed you if you'd gotten to me."

 

"But you didn't. You just knocked me over the head. Jemma, I will always try to save you because you are the most important person in the world to me and that will never change."

 

"What about when you were on that mission with Ward then huh? I heard all about that mission afterwards. You almost died so many times I..."

 

"This isn't a competition Jemma!" Fitz shouted. So. Much. Shouting. He knew he'd lose his voice tomorrow. "This isn't a competition, this is our life! This is your life, and this is my life. This is the life we chose. I chose to come with you Jemma. I did. You may have led a persuasive argument that day, but in the end it was my decision to follow you into the field. And like I said, I would do it again and again. Because I..." he sucked in a breath and looked at her, right in the eyes. "Because I love you. I always have and I always will. I think I fell in love with you that first day, when we were sitting there on the steps of the academy, and just...talking. I hadn't just talked to someone for such a long time and you were the first person to not turn away from me so quickly. I fell in love and I've been in love ever since. Years later, I still love you Jemma, and I think for me, that's why you leaving hurt the most. I love you and you just...left me. I'd almost hoped that...telling you, or rather showing you might... not that I expected anything. You don't owe me love just for being your friend, not a wanker, and telling you I loved you. But a part of me kind of hoped that you might have felt the same. So when you did leave, it felt like you were telling me you didn't love me enough to stay. That you loved me as a friend but only so much. That...those tiny, far off hints of hope I'd had before that you might have felt the same way were very far off and imaginary. And it hurt. I needed you Jemma. I needed my best friend. I needed the person I loved most in the world and you were gone." Jemma bowed her head, unable to once again look at him. He sighed once more and went to her, raising her chin back up to look at him with one of his hands. " Jemma..."

 

"You deserve better." she breathed. "You deserve so much better. I...I'm a wreck. I've become ...I am different from who I was seven years ago. You deserve someone who won't lead you into danger and who will give you some sense of normality and..."

 

"Do you love me?"

 

"What?"

 

"Do. You. Love. Me? Do you, Jemma Simmons, return my love? There isn't a right or wrong answer here mind. Like I said, I don't expect you to return my feelings just because I was who I was and told you I love you. But I need to know. Do you love me?"

 

"Fitz, is this really the right ti..."

 

"Yes, it is." He cut in. "Answer me."

 

"Fitz..."

 

"Right...right." He stepped back, and moved to leave. "We'll be fine. See? You don't feel the same way. That's another way to help me heal. I still don't regret what I've done. I would do it all again. I'd still fall in love, and I'd still save you and I'd still do everything else. I love you, even if you don't love me back, not in that way. I just... this has been too much information in too short a time and too be honest I'm still not fully...yeah. I need some... I need to think." He'd gotten to the door when he felt one of her hands wrap around his arm, turn him around, and then...she kissed him. Hard. After recovering from his shock, he kissed back, pulling her closer as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Eventually, they broke apart, and she was looking at him with an expression he'd come to know as her 'Oh Fitz...' face. When he'd acted silly or said something ridiculous. Always that look. It was affection mixed with bemusement and a slight smile. And she reserved it just for him.

 

"I love you." She said. " I love you Fitz, and that is part of why I fled. After everything happened, I realized that I loved you back, and there you were in a coma, and then struggling to say even my name, and the pain that I felt, believing I was responsible for the person I loved being  where they were...it was too much."

 

"No. Never. Never feel like that." He whispered, touching his forehead to hers. " It's you and me, you and me till the end."

 

"You get one of us, you get both of us?"

 

"Exactly. We even had a ship name before we were a ship." Jemma laughed at his comment and he smiled. "I like that, a genuine Jemma Simmons smile."

 

"FitzSimmons..." Jemma let the name roll off her tongue, suddenly loving the nickname everyone had given them so long ago. It had annoyed her at first. After all they were both their own person, but now... " I like it."

 

"I do too." They stood there in a comfortable, relieving silence, their foreheads still touching, arms wrapped around each other, for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, before either of them said anything again.

 

"You go, I go. That's the deal."

 

"That's the deal." Fitz agreed.

 

"We're sticking together. We're still healing but..."

 

"We'll heal together." Fitz finished, making her smile.

 

"We'll heal together." She looked up at him and  her smile brightened. "I am suddenly famished. How about you? Why don't we get something to eat in the kitchen?"

 

"Sounds good to me. Skye told me you hadn't eaten much. And Coulson told me about your fridge while you were undercover."

 

"What a tattle tale..." Jemma joked. Fitz smiled and took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together before bringing her hand up to his lips and kissing it.

 

"Come on Simmons." He said, pulling her out the door and down the hall towards the kitchen.

 

"Whatever Fitz, whatever."

 

"Hey!" They stopped when they heard Skye's voice calling after them. She ran up to them, halting so suddenly her bangs actually swished off her head momentarily before settling back down. "It looks like you guys worked things out. Please tell me you worked things out. I hated seeing my best friends so sad. Tell me you worked everything out." For someone so dangerous, Skye had the amazing ability to look like a desperate, sad puppy. Standing there in front of them, black cargo pants, dark green and navy blue stripped shirt, and boots, her hair up in a ponytail and swishing as she looked from one to the other with desperation in her eyes, she made a conflicting picture.

 

"Yes, Skye, we worked things out." Fitz replied, putting her out of her misery. The smile that grew on her face, especially after looking down and seeing their laced fingers, warmed both of their hearts. She appeared to be so happy that they were...happy.

 

"Good. You're damn right you worked it out. Tripp and I weren't above locking you two in a closet until you did. He'll be happy too. He's very fond of the both of you. This is good. This pleases me." Skye looked down at her watch and then cursed. "I was supposed to be in the gym ten minutes ago to spar with May. Dammit, she's going to kick my ass extra hard today for being late. Gotta jet, love you both!" She ran up to them, bear hugging them quickly before taking off down the corridor. They smiled the rest of the day.

A month later, they were lying in Fitz's bed, just reading their respective books and relaxing before going to sleep, when Fitz looked over and spotted the gunshot wound scar on her shoulder, visible only now that she was wearing a sleeveless pajama top. They hadn't been entirely intimate, not yet. They agreed they would take time to adjust before that, but the fact that he hadn't seen...

"Jemma is that a gunshot wound?" He asked, worried and shocked.

"Shit..." she muttered.

 

The end. :) 


End file.
